Saturday, 17 September 2016

Worth it and not

Thanks for the comments on my shopping post.....Rachel, the only reason I don't mention by name shops or branded products is that I've found when I do, I get bombarded by adverts for them. Not pop ups, I don't have any of those....but on my home page and those websites, blogs or pages I visit which allow adverts. I always think it's a little bit scary and 'big brotherish' when, 2 minutes after I've mentioned the name of something, it just happens to appear in an ad - we are being watched!! I reckon it's a downright bloody cheek that somebody somewhere is reading absolutely everything I write....not just this blog (of course my readers aren't bloody cheeky!!), but even my private emails. Even if it's not an actual person, but some kind of computer programme - well, somebody had to input that programme in the first place. Invasion of privacy I think. Ok, rant over lol.The title refers to what we've grown this year. We have had an exceptionally good harvest of onions, carrots, French beans, the dreaded courgettes of course, tomatoes, summer squash, cucumbers, raspberries, blackcurrants and strawberries. We've also got loads of leeks and butternut squash yet to be harvested. Don't know about the sweet potatoes and oca yet, they'll come later hopefully...it's the first time we've grown both of those. Not sure about the purple sprouting broccoli or Brussels sprouts yet either, as they're covered up with a netting cage.....they've certainly put a lot of growth on. What haven't done so well are potatoes (we've given up growing maincrop spuds in the ground....they get eaten to buggery by slugs). This year we grew only new potatoes in bags - we've done this before, but didn't have as good a yield this year as in previous years. The peas (I absolutely love fresh peas, one of my favourite veggies) were doing fine until a sudden and extremely virulent attack of powdery mildew - to do with the weather I expect. Mooli (Japanese radish) both bolted and were eaten to death by slugs. Ordinary radishes too get chewed so much before we get to them! We may have better success with growing those in pots. Lots of onions started to bolt in early summer (a weather thing again I guess) - we cut off the flowering shoots as soon as we saw them, which seemed to save a lot of them. Some still developed thick stems, I've made sure to use those first as they won't store. The blueberries (we have 2 bushes in pots) were doing reasonably well, but the birds absolutely love them. We had covered them with fleece just before we went away for a few days, but whilst we were away it was extremely windy here, the wind blew the fleece off and the birds had a feast. We managed to get just a couple of tubs' worth to freeze. Oh well, they're just as entitled as we are to eat, I suppose! No pears or plums yet, but the trees are young. We've had about a dozen apples though, our first year for them from this young tree, a Fiesta variety.So about now we would be starting to make plans for what to grow next year. However, since we have no idea where we'll be living next year, we don't know yet what to do. It may of course be that we're still here, but probably won't know until around February whether that's possible. And if we do move to a new place, it may be that we have to start a veg plot from scratch...another unknown.

2 comments:

I love spending the winter evenings drawing up plans for the following year, you could always plan some container growing then if you move you can take them with you, thats what I did the yer I was moving.

About Me

This blog is about our daily life here in beautiful rural Somerset, cooking, baking, growing veg and fruit, furnishing the house with preloved renovated things, and making preparations as husband nears retirement.

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